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Man charged with threatening mother

A Grand Junction man was ordered by a judge not to have contact with his mother after he was charged with threatening her in their home.

Mesa County Judge Craig Henderson on Wednesday set bond at $3,000 for Marc Alan Muffly, 43, on charges of menacing, neglect of an at-risk adult and criminal mischief.

According to Muffly’s arrest affidavit, police received a report about 9 p.m. Tuesday that an angry, intoxicated man was throwing knives at his elderly mother. When a Mesa County sheriff’s deputy arrived and was waiting outside the home’s front door, he heard a man, later identified as Muffly, saying he had a meat cleaver and “it could chop someone’s head clean off.” The man then made a chopping motion with his hand, saying “whack, whack, whack,” the affidavit said.

After Muffly’s 70-year-old mother allowed the deputy inside the home, the woman said she and her son had been arguing. After she had gone into her bedroom, he began throwing kitchen knives at a wall. The woman said she became afraid of the knieves and her son’s statement about the meat cleaver, so she loaded a rifle with one round of ammunition to be able to defend herself, the affidavit said.

“She stated she had no intention of shooting him or killing him and that she thought if he attacked her with a knife she may shoot him in the leg to stop him,” the affidavit said.

The woman told police she did not want her son arrested because he was already in trouble for drunken driving and that being arrested again might aggravate him and cause him to retaliate against her.

“She said he had been drinking alcohol and she just wanted him to stop drinking,” the affidavit said.

Muffly admitted to the deputy that he had thrown three knives at the wall and admitted to making a statement about chopping off someone’s head with a meat cleaver, the affidavit said.

In court Wednesday, Muffly told Henderson that he wanted to get out of jail so he could continue to work and support his mother and girlfriend. He downplayed his mother having loaded a rifle at the home, saying she regularly keeps loaded guns in the house.